temporary files

[bhardwajankita07]

Hi Team,

In order to perform tasks like sorting, loading or some other tasks does Alteryx creates temporary files?

Regards

Ankita 

[jdunkerley79]

Yes, I believe the Alteryx engine will swap out to disk as it needs to. It creates some temporary files as needed, no other way it could handle the magnitude of data it is possible to process.

[bhardwajankita07]

Thanks @jdunkerley79 :)

[tom_montpool · Accepted solution]

If you select the "Workflow" tab when you're configuring a workflow, you will see the path used for writing out temp files.

There are some really cool things about this:

1. You can configure the temp file path globally in your user\system settings or per-workflow on the workflow configuration tab
2. You can write output to the temp file path using %Engine.TempFilePath% (e.g. %Engine.TempFilePath%MyFile.yxdb)
   • When your workflow finishes and you close Alteryx, content in %Engine.TempFilePath% is deleted -- this is a great way to let Alteryx clean up interim content without your intervention.

Some things to be aware of:

1. If a process 'dies', the temp file isn't necessarily cleared out. It's a good idea to check the temp file path periodically for abandoned temp files/folders.
2. As far as I know, temp files must be stored on the machine running Alteryx (e.g. you can't put the temp files on a network drive).

For more information, search the Alteryx help (F1) for %temp% (https://help.alteryx.com/10.0/index.htm#TempFiles.htm#kanchor2547)